Material properties such as strength and ductility are important for a multitude of applications. One approach to enhancing the properties of metal-based materials involves the introduction of additional materials to metal. Recently, very small particles having dimensions in the nanometer scale have been introduced to metal-based materials.
While nanometer-scale materials (“nanomaterials”) such as nanoparticles and nanoplatelets can be useful in a variety of applications, such nanomaterials often align to grain boundaries or gather in clusters, which can limit the ability to enhance various properties of metal-based materials. For example, incorporating nanoplatelets such as graphene sheets into metal alloys can be difficult due to large surface areas, thin sheet geometry and high surface energy, which can lead to agglomerations. Moreover, nanomaterials are difficult to handle, as they tend to float to the surface of the molten metal and/or agglomerate, such that the nanomaterials do not stay dispersed in the metal. Accordingly, nanocomposite materials (e.g., a matrix to which nanomaterials have been added to improve one or more material properties) are challenging to produce in large, industrial size quantities.
These and other problems have been challenging to a variety of materials, and to methods for making those materials.